By David Hemphill, Chief Technology Officer, ObjectFX Published in GeoPlace August 2009 Because of their proximity to urban centers and other critical infrastructure, ports make attractive terrorist targets due to the fact that a successful attack would result in significant loss of life, structural damage and economic impact. Protecting our ports requires constant vigilance by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and marine enforcement officers. We rely on the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and others to ensure our safety and protect our nation’s critical infrastructure. Since Sept. 11, 2001, however, mission priorities of the USCG have shifted significantly, as critical new challenges made their way to the forefront. Traditionally, mission priorities focused on search-and-rescue operations, combating drug smuggling and preventing illegal immigration. Dynamic Cluster Detection determines when a user-specified number of vessels are within a certain proximity at the same time. After the terrorist attack in 2001, priorities shifted to homeland security and maritime domain [...]

Published in C4ISR Journal, June 3, 2009 NGA isn’t the only agency that directly benefits from its CRADAs. Technology developed under NGA CRADAs has been incorporated in major procurements. A 1999 CRADA with geospatial intelligence-tool developer ObjectFX, which focused on displaying situational awareness and common-operating picture data, led to wide applications, according to Steve Panzer, vice president of ObjectFX’s government division. Our product was really built for the commercial industry, but NGA saw the value of moving our technology into an area where they could make better use of it both for the intelligence community and the defense community,” Panzer said. NGA selected ObjectFX’s SpatialFX product for its Image Exploitation Support System, a geospatial database of imagery and other data. The Army also included the software in its All Source Analysis System and its Tactical Exploitation System, which automate the analysis of intelligence from satellites and airborne sensors. “I don’t think we would have been [...]

By Joe Francica, Editor in Chief and Vice Publisher, Directions Magazine May 06, 2009 As sensory information becomes more advanced, the government is faced with a continuous and ever-expanding stream of real-time information from which it collects intelligence in support of national security. Thousands of small, seemingly insignificant events happen every day. ObjectFX has created a solution that fits within Complex Event Processing. CEP helps to automate incident detection and is enabling applications in government to streamline processes, while more quickly identifying what’s important. Geospatial analysts, working toward the same goal of most efficiently identifying actionable intelligence, are turning to Geospatial Event Processing to correlate space- and time-relevant events to determine when a significant event has occurred. Editor in Chief Joe Francica posed some questions to Steve Panzer, the vice president of ObjectFX’s Government Division. Read the full story

By Steve Panzer, ObjectFX Published in Military Geospatial Technology, April 2009 When implemented well, public-private partnerships bring the best of both worlds together. A cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA), in which private enterprise provides innovative technology for public sector review, analysis, support and guidance, is an excellent example of a public-private partnership that works. This partnership leverages resources and knowledge from the private sector, while providing guidance from the public sector and insight into the specific needs of individual government agencies. A CRADA offers both parties the opportunity to share technical expertise, ideas and information in a protected environment. Originally authorized in 1986 as a means of expanding technology transfer between federal laboratories and the private sector, the CRADA program ultimately strives to advance science and technology that not only meets government objectives but also has viability in other potential commercial applications. The candid interactions that are nurtured through a CRADA bring both public enterprises [...]

Written by Steve Panzer, ObjectFX Published in Government Security News, April 14, 2009 Protecting our nation’s borders is a daunting task, requiring constant vigilance by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and border and port security officials. Because border and port security officials face a unique set of challenges at any given point of entry, increased awareness and enhanced security operations are needed. While sensor-based intelligence information is currently being used to enhance security, the ever-expanding number of land-based and airborne sensor platforms is providing an unmanageable deluge of information – ultimately causing some important information to be overlooked. Government agencies are turning to geospatial solutions as an effective means of making sense of this information and extracting what’s important – identifying actionable intelligence by getting critical information to the right people at the right time. Since it is nearly impossible to patrol every mile of border, or inspect each individual container entering US ports, [...]

By Kevin Crothers, ObjectFX Published in T3 (Transport Technology Today), May 2008 This year marks the 20th anniversary of the advent of mobile asset tracking systems, beginning with the introduction of OmniTRACS in 1988. We have come a long way from tools that reported the location of our trucks once every hour and allowed us to send basic text messages. In fact, now is a good time for us to ask how this technology will continue to evolve and what features and benefits can we expect in the future. What was once mere automation of manual functions like driver check calls has now grown to full-featured systems that produce driver logs, compute fuel taxes, forward ECM fault codes and present other information about vehicle, driver and load. Systems are available that automatically record arrivals, departures and duration of stops, thus providing the raw information to support activity-based costing and much more. The 20-year evolution has [...]

By Mark Myers, ObjectFX Published in GeoWorld, February 2007 Technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), as well as a new generation of sensing devices, have made it possible to monitor just about any human or physical activity and pinpoint that activity in time and space. Sensor networks and ubiquitous communication infrastructure can tie such data to back-end systems for a variety of applications. Some obvious examples are vehicle-tracking systems used by commercial shippers as well as “people-tracking” services that have emerged in the United States and elsewhere. Although commercial and consumer-oriented “location-based services” have gotten most of the attention to date, there are several not-so-obvious applications in industry, public safety, homeland security and defense that use dynamic location data. With so much data available, the key challenge for any application is to recognize the interesting and important exceptions. As humans, we’re good at determining what conditions should be [...]

By Brian Beveridge, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Steve Panzer, ObjectFX Published in Pathfinder, November/December 2006 Working with NGA’s Geospatial-Intelligence Advancement Testbed (GIAT), ObjectFX is integrating analytics and automated reporting with the latest geographic visualization systems. When ObjectFX approached NGA seven years ago to explore a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), it was already in the commercial market for geographic information systems. The Minneapolis-based company provides a Java-based software platform called SpatialFX that enables the integration into enterprise applications of location-based services like vehicle routing and address geocoding. The problem was that this small business lacked experience with the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Communities (IC), and the specific needs of the military and intelligence users. The solution was to enter into a CRADA where the goal is to create a technology partnership that benefits NGA’s customer base while making the commercial partner’s technology more attuned to the unique requirements of DoD and the IC. [...]